The Leading Facts of English History

e southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A Scotchman named Law had started a similar project in France, known as the "Mississippi Company," which pro

l.[1] Sir Robert Walpole (S534) had no faith in the scheme, and attacked it vigorously; but other influential members of the Government gave it their encouragement. The directors came

istory of Londo

istence with objects almost as absurd as those of the philosophers whom Swift ridiculed in "Gulliver's Trav

be able to foretell his own destiny by examining the stars; a second was to manufacture butter out of beech trees; a third

er." He found the public so gullible and so greedy that he sold 2000 pounds worth of the new stock in the course of a single morning. He then prudentl

ding to the London sto

uggling fortune hunte

tement was at its heigh

n France had a

official who had helped to blow the bubble was sent to the Tower. Another committed suicide rather than face a parliamentary committee of investigat